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Re. Fink, Noam,, Coleman Moynihan: Moynihan very well MAY have been the most pro-Israel public facing gentile two months ago but Douglas Murray has explosively and exhaustively assumed the mantle since. This also didn’t come out of nowhere. I fist laid eyes on DM long before I laid ears on the Fifth. My own (long gone) boyfriend’s “but...” in the wake of Charlie Hebdo left me scrambling to make sense of my peer group (and so began my slow March away).... and I found this: a puffy, bleary younger Douglas making a case against creeping relativism I’d been struggling to name since a truly stupid Moral Philosophy course I’d endured in the 90’s.

Moynihan has easily replaced DM in my heart for obvs reasons, but would be remiss not to mention Noam’s slight here.

https://youtu.be/FSM0D3y7erU?si=aHcxwriKwev2I7NX

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Great point!

Of course the young Sylvia Plath in everyone reveres MM, but this clip (which I hadn't seen) reminded me why I positively love Douglas Murray (another being the conversation with the formerly sane Vivek where DM proposed replacing DEI adminstators with butlers). He refuses to be sidetracked or cowed, yet he never becomes someone truly hateful. How he balances this in the face of bullshit is beyond me.

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damn the predilections of young Sylvia 😂

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As an NFC member, I am once again asking you for TFC merch. Specifically, a TFC "dad hat" so I can be the most heterodox dude at the playground with my daughter.

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Dec 3, 2023·edited Dec 4, 2023Liked by Matt Welch

Ditto!!

I see that TFC "dad hat" and up the merch to a MM NSFW TFC shirt. I believe Matt and i had a design discussion, in the comments, months ago. I also remember Coco (who is simply fantastic) coming up with some amazing 5th merch designs?

Three men:

one who has no socks, only 1 pair of shoes (and is apparently Coco's new dog?) ;

one, who only has cargo shorts and apparently a new man/dog; and

one who spends more time on his hair and more money on his runners than most women.

The merch opportunities, based on just the superficial, are endless.

If WW3 is probable, all i want is some decent merch and the extra bottle of Xanax the pharmacist accidently gave me. The tribe has has some difficult months with many more to come, The 2023 Hanukkah miracle could be some TFC Shamatte.

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Dec 3, 2023·edited Dec 3, 2023Liked by Matt Welch

And I'm off to click all the links to all the things. And for what it's worth, gents, when I can afford to fly first class even once, I'll be sure to support your endeavors to do so as well. <3

Referencing the Dworman/Moynihan/Coleman discussion, I once saw Cornel West in an airport from a distance. It was the hair. I had about 45 minutes, so I stalked him all the way to his gate, stopped him to shake his hand and tell him thanks for being bold, and then, after walking away, decided I just couldn't leave without a picture with him so I WENT BACK and asked for one. By then, he was on the phone with his wife (he told me as I apologized for interrupting him again), but graciously took a ridiculous selfie with me. If I could post it here, I would - I look like someone who did not take a direct flight, but that would just back up my comment above re: NFC.

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KMW, national treasure.

Also...nice.

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KMW, is my political crush(Lauren Boebert is a close second, but when it comes to crazy hot you always have to be mindful of those crazy and hot ratios).

If I showed my wife a picture of her she'd roll her eyes and say, "oh of course, you with your bird-face brunettes with dyed hair".

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Yes to a show in Chicago!

We can all go rob a Macys afterwards for fun (Kmele can quote MLK out of context to get us out of any trouble).

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“In October, web and email views of Free Press content jumped 62% to 23.8 million”

So Bari has become a behemoth.

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Sadly, our analysis-challenged culture won't know how to process that. For a lot of Bari's critics their only conclusion will be, "gee there is an awful lot of transphobic bigots out there.

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Big media brains: “Bigotry jumped 62% in October, Bad Guys win again.”

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Dec 4, 2023Liked by Matt Welch

Love “Working for the Weekend.” Like others I follow the links to see TFC out in the wild. One observation - when they are on shows with advertising? Yikes. So glad TFC is funded through subscriptions. It’s really jarring to be listening to some provocative political discussion only to be interrupted by the host hawking age defying elixirs, gravity shoes and hot tubs. How would Moynihan even do a commercial?! In one of his accents?!

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Dec 4, 2023·edited Dec 4, 2023

Methinks the commercials would be done much like Norm McDonald

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Dec 4, 2023Liked by Matt Welch

Thank you, Matt, I’m honored!

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It would be great if you guys came to Chicago! I will brainstorm ideas for venues. I'm thinking maybe Hyde Park (U of C) or West Loop (trendy, convenient location). Any more info you can share?

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West Loop or West Town(less bougie but still fun - also I live there). As far as specific venue, I’d need to know the capacity needed

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Hey, I was listening to the Ethan Strauss podcast, wherein Moynihan randomly mentioned Kissinger. Then...HE DIES! Another one bites the dust immediately after a MM reference. To paraphrase f Nikki Haley “KEEP MY NAME OUT YOUR MOUTH”

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Fun fact: The best antidote to Malört is more Malört.

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Lies! If anyone ever offers you Malort, the only proper response is to throw it in the trash.

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As a Chicagoan, I have to agree with Matt here. They call it the Chicago handshake, it should be called the Chicago bitch slap

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BTW, only for FiF-ers who are also BARPOD ppl: if you are interested in follow-up on Katie's tale about a certain "Strict Headmistress" well--that's this lady. We interviewed her a bit before she appeared as a topic on BARPOD. She runs an excellent inner city school, and also gets attacked a lot online. Suspect maybe in reaction to the attacks, she's gotten into the bad habit of picking online fights, as Katie documented. Still doing great things for her students, regardless. https://technoskeptic.substack.com/p/michaela-headmistress-katharine-birbalsingh

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I don't have kids so I obviously cannot interpret what must be Moynihan's joy of fatherhood, when to my cynical childless eye in the pic at the top of WFTW, it looks like he is staring out towards a darkening horizon and telling himself, "You can do this, don't dump the girl and run from the room, stay in your happy place!"

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Wondered if you guys had any plans to dig into the recent George Floyd revisionism, which may actually be correct. I know it’s a hot potato, but if only tucker Carlson is willing to talk about it…😬😬😅

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Glenn and John did a subscriber episode on it. I dropped $6 to hear it early. Glenn was in full-on preaching mode. I recommend it!

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that's where I first heard about it. But I think more sensible people need to cover it so it's not just right-wing territory. Maybe it's overblown. [shrug emoji] But when liberals like me see something like the body cam footage, and dead silence from the left and mainstream media, it's a little floyd-pilling. (Same way I came down off my lab leak ledge once it got a fair hearing in the mainstream.)

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I think this is where the media fails. The body cam footage was available (at least in parts) for anyone to see. I remember watching it sometime around when the charges were filed. But God forbid the media show it to the general public. I don't think the evidence supported a 2nd degree murder conviction.

However, what was shocking to me was the indifference he showed to Floyd. I really think he could care less if he was dying. I think that's from being on the beat too long. He just looks like someone who has seen it all and stops caring about people even if they are perps.

The conviction of the other officers on an aiding and abetting charges are interesting from a Constitutional perspective. The Supreme Court has ruled that police officers have no general duty to defend citizens unless they bear a special relationship. Would that include no duty to defend from other officers? Yes there was a special relationship since Floyd was in custody but does that relationship extend to other officers who didn't hold him in custody?

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There seems to be a real tension in libertarian circles these days and I have seen it played out several times on TFC. The idea that on the one hand the mainstream media has an extreme leftist bias towards spinning the structurally racist narrative about America, especially in its policing, and that narrative is often seriously factually challenged and needs to be called on; and the idea that the most dangerous impediment to a truly libertarian society is to have an authority that is almost completely unaccountable in its day to day activities, is prone to corruption by its very nature, and that the police system is one of the best examples we have of such a system.

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Great comment. Sometimes there’s a larger focus on antagonizing or dismissing the leftist and victimhood narrative claims surrounding an issue than there is interest in scrutinizing real abuses of power or underlying threats to civil liberty. Just cause there’s some lefty hysteria surrounding an issue doesn’t mean that the most principled liberty oriented approach is to begin with a cultural critique of how the situation is being approached by emotionally driven and often uninformed people. Personally I see this with policing, immigration, and currently foreign policy. I’m witnessing a general conservative shift with TFC, still love the guys but it’s been disappointing to witness.

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John McWhorter doesn't like being called a right-wing conservative ;)

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Holy shit, you guys weren't exaggerating with regard to Shane MacGowan's teeth...

Also, I seem to recollect that we've been promised a Josh Barro episode a few weeks ago - he recently had a great post on a communist poetry professor who was being stalked and harrassed by an even more communist LatinXxXQBIPOC*!* professor.

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